PS: As we always do, the route back to Bucuresti airport from Vurpar winds through a few tourist destinations. On this trip we stopped at Balea Lake high in the Carpathians. There is a hunting lodge up there a few hundred feet above the tree line where dictator Ceausescu use to take his cronies and wife for relaxation. They say building the road to this retreat costs hundreds of lives of political prisons. It is a very remote place, as you can see by the pictures.

At the retreat workers gave us a tour of the building introducing us to the chambers in which the dictator and his wife slept.

Once in Bucuresti, no trip would be complete without a conversation with one of Romania's leading writers, Grid Mordorcea, who has been to America on a number of occasions and has written humorous, sardonic, critical reviews of his experiences. He has published dozens of critically acclaimed works.

<<Previous Page